Simon LeVay
Country
Great Britain
Birth - Death
1943 -
Occupation
Medicine
Description
Simon LeVay is a leading scientist whose work in the field of neurobiology has led to new insight into the causes and development of sexual orientation in humans. This path breaking research has helped the LGBTQ community in its efforts to argue that sexual orientation is inherent to the individual and not a personally chosen characteristic.
Born as the second of five sons to a family already in the medical field, LeVay did not have a natural attraction to education. Part of this is explained by his isolation in school for his effeminate behaviour, preferring reading and study to sports. He was particularly attached to his mother and realized he was gay by age 13, becoming sexually active at age 14. His early studies of the classics made him realize that this was not an unnatural behaviour.
LeVay’s goal was to get into medical school and this required him to take on extra courses in the sciences. He eventually settled at Cambridge University for his pre-med studies. These studies were often interrupted by bouts of depression, but he graduated and began his formal medical training at University College Hospital in London. This was followed by further studies at the Neurobiology Department at Harvard Medical School in Boston, joining the department on graduation from 1974-1984. LeVay then worked at the prestigious Sulk Institute for Biological Studies in California from 1984-1993, with a focus on vision research.
A close friend and fellow doctor with whom LeVay had an intimate relationship was diagnosed and died of AIDS during this period. This proved to be a challenging time for Simon. It brought a recurrence of his depression as he dealt with the trauma. At the time, he became particularly intrigued by a study showing that a group of nerve cells in the hypothalamus of rats varied in size between the sexes. This challenged LeVay to research further to see if the same difference occurs between gay and straight people in the size of INAH3.
Using anonymously coded brains, LeVay found that, indeed, INAH3 was half the size in gay men than in straight men, on average. When his results were published in the prestigious Science magazine in 1991 it caused a sensation and received considerable media attention. The result of his studies showed that biology was a determinant in sexual orientation - it was not solely life experiences or emotional attachment and direction that determined sexual orientation.
LeVay stresses that he did not find homosexuality to be genetically determined. However, it does show that being gay or straight is a central part of the biology, and hence the inherent nature, of the individual. Once it is so determined, it does not necessarily change, and hence the notion that one’s sexual orientation can be changed is not practical. Subsequent studies have confirmed LeVay’s findings. They suggest that what goes on differently between homosexual and heterosexual men is something in their brain which descends from before birth when new cells are being born and developed. The difference comes about in part by sex hormones that are circulating in the blood of the fetus.
Opponents of the LGBTQ community and its lifestyle have long used the argument that it is a choice. If, however, being homosexual or heterosexual was determined by anatomy, their argument is scientifically unstable. Sexual orientation is a stable attribute of an individual’s personality (despite the fact that the individual may go through life denying its existence) which adds further credence to the discovery. The fact that his results were published in such an esteemed journal, and was conducted and written by such an authoritative scientist, caused the international sensation when presented.
A challenge to the results lies in the Kinsey argument that there is a range of gay-straight behaviour in the community. Nevertheless, research has to begin at some point and LeVay competently began that process. The general response has been enthusiastic and positive. The interaction of sex hormones during the creation of the fetus has now become a valid scientific hypothesis on the determination of one’s sexual orientation.
